Very conflicting and very mixed were my feelings, as I set forth alone.
I had come well, very well, out of a trying emergency. I was neither
driven to pretend I was something other than myself, with grand
surroundings, and illustrious belongings, nor had I masqueraded under
a feigned name and a false history; but as Potts, son of Potts the
apothecary, I had carried my head high and borne myself creditably.
_Magna est Veritas_, indeed! I am not so sure of the _prævalebit
semper_, but, assuredly, where it does succeed, the success is
wonderful.
Heaven knows into what tortuous entanglements might my passion for the
“imaginative”--I liked this name for it--have led me, had I given way to
one of my usual temptations. In more than one of my flights have I found
myself carried up into a region, and have had to sustain an atmosphere
very unsuited to my respiration, and now, with the mere prudence of
walking on the _terra firma_, and treading the common highway of life,
I found I had reached my goal safely and speedily. Flowers do not assume
to be shrubs, nor shrubs affect to be forest trees; the limestone and
granite never pretend that they are porphyry and onyx. Nature is real,
and why should man alone be untruthful and unreal? If I liked these
reflections, and tried to lose myself in them, it was in the hope of
shutting out others less gratifying; but, do what I would, there, before
me, arose the image of Catinka, as she stood at the edge of the rivulet,
that stream which seemed to cut me off from one portion of my life, and
make the past irrevocably gone forever.
I am certain I was quite right in parting with that girl. Any
respectable man, a father of a family, would have applauded me for
severing this dangerous connection. What could come of such association
except unhappiness? “Potts,” would the biographer say,--“Potts saw, with
the unerring instinct of his quick perception, that this young creature
would one day or other have laid at his feet the burnt-offering of her
heart, and then, what could he have done? If Potts had been less endowed
with genius, or less armed in honesty, he had not anticipated this
peril, or, foreseeing, bad undervalued it. But he both saw and feared
it. How very differently had a libertine reasoned out this situation!”
And then I thought how wicked I might have been,--a monster of crime
and atrocity. Every one knows the sensation of lying snugly a-bed on a
stormy night, and, as the rain plashes and the wind howls, drawing more
closely around him the coverlet, and the selfish satisfaction of his own
comfort, heightened by all the possible hardships of others outside. In
the same benevolent spirit, but not by any means so reprehensible, is it
pleasant to imagine oneself a great criminal, standing in the dock, to
be stared at by a horror-struck public, photographed, shaved, prison
costumed, exhorted, sentenced, and tien, just as the last hammer has
driven the last nail into the scaffold, and the great bell has tolled
out, to find that you are sitting by your wood fire, with your curtain
drawn, your uncut volume beside you, and your peculiar weakness, be it
tea, or sherry-cobbler, at your elbow. I constantly take a “rise” out
of myself in this fashion, and rarely a week goes over that I have not
either poisoned a sister or had a shot at the Queen. It is a sort
of intellectual Russian bath, in which the luxury consists in the
exaggerated alternative between being scalded first and rolled in the
snow afterwards. It was in this figurative snow I was now disporting
myself, pleasantly and refreshingly, and yet remorse, like a sturdy dun,
stood at my gate, and refused to go away.
Had I, indeed, treated her harshly,--had I rejected the offer of her
young and innocent heart? Very puzzling and embarrassing question this,
and especially to a man who had nothing of the coxcomb in his nature,
none of that prompting of self-love that would suggest a vain reply.
I felt that it was very natural _she_ should have been struck by the
attractive features of my character, but I felt this without a particle
of conceit. I even experienced a sense of sorrow as I thought over
it, just as a conscientious siren might have regretted that nature had
endowed her with such a charming voice; and this duty--for it was a
duty--discharged, I bethought me of my own future. I had a mission,
which was to see Kate Herbert and give her Miss Crofton's letter. In
doing so, I must needs throw off all disguises and mockeries, and be
Potts, the very creature she sneered at, the man whose mere name was
enough to suggest a vulgar life and a snob's nature! No matter
what misery it may give, I will do it manfully. _She_ may never
appreciate--the world at large may never appreciate--what noble motives
were hidden beneath these assumed natures, mere costumes as they were,
to impart more vigor and persuasiveness to sentiments which, uttered in
the undress of Potts, would have carried no convictions with them. Play
Macbeth in a paletot, perform Othello in “pegtops,” and see what effect
you will produce! Well, my pretended station and rank were the mere
gauds and properties that gave force to my opinions. And now to
relinquish these, and be the actor, in the garish light of the noonday,
and a shabby-genteel coat and hat! “I will do it,” muttered I,--“I will
do it, but the suffering will be intense!” When the prisoner sentenced
to a long captivity is no more addressed by his name, but simply called
No. 18, or 43, it is said that the shock seems to kill the sense of
identity with him, and that nothing more tends to that stolid air of
indifference, that hopeless inactivity of feature, so characteristic
of a prison life; in the very same way am I affected when limited to my
Potts nature, and condemned to confine myself within the narrow bounds
of that one small identity. From what Prince Max has said at the _table
d'hôte_ at Bregenz, it was clear that Mrs. Keats had already learned
I was not the young prince of the House of Orleans; but, in being
disabused of one error, she seemed to have fallen into another; and
it behoved me to explain that I was not a rope-dancer or a mountebank.
“She, too, shall know me in my Potts nature,” said I; “she also shall
recognize me in the 'majesty of myself.'” I was not very sure of what
that was, but found it in Hegel.
And when I have completed this task, I will throw myself like a waif
upon the waters of life. I will be that which the moment or the event
shall make me,--neither trammelled by the past nor awed by the future.
I will take the world as the drama of a day. Were men to do this, what
breadth and generosity would it impart to them! It is in self-seeking
and advancement that we narrow our faculties and imprison our natures.
A man fancies he owns a palace and a demesne, but it is the palace that
owns _him_, obliges him to maintain a certain state, live in a certain
style, surrounded with certain observances, not one of which may be,
perhaps, native to him. It is the poor man, who comes to visit and gaze
on his splendors, who really enjoys them; _he_ sees them without one
detracting influence,--not to say that in _his_ heart are no corroding
jealousies of some other rich man, who has a finer Claude, or a grander
Rubens. Instead, besides, of owning one palace and one garden, it is the
universe he owns: the vast savannah is his race-ground; Niagara his
own private cascade. My heart bounded with these buoyant fancies, and I
stepped out briskly on my road. Now that I had made this vow of poverty
to myself, I felt very light-hearted and gay. So long as a man is
struggling for place and pre-eminence in life, how can he be generous,
how even gracious? “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ox,” says the
commandment, but surely it must have been your neighbor's before it
was yours, and if you have striven for it, it is likely that you have
coveted it. Now, I will covet nothing,--positively nothing,--and I will
see if in this noble spirit there will not be a reward proportionately
ample and splendid.
My road led through that wild and somewhat dreary valley by which the
Upper Rhine descends, fed by many an Alpine stream and torrent, to reach
the fertile plains of Germany. It was a desolate expanse of shingle,
with here and there little patches of oak scrub, or, at rare intervals,
small enclosures of tillage, though how tilled, or for whom, it was hard
to say, since not a trace of inhabitant could be seen, far or wide. Deep
fissures, the course of many a mountain stream, cut the road at places,
and through these the foot traveller had to pass on stepping-stones;
while wheel carriages, descending into the chaos of rocks and stones,
fared even worse, and incurred serious peril to spring and axle in the
passage. On the mountain-sides, indeed, some chalets were to be seen,
very high up, and scarcely accessible, but ever surrounded with little
tracts of greener verdure and more varied foliage. From these
heights, too, I could hear the melodious ring of the bells worn by the
cattle,--sure signs of peasant comfort. “Might not a man find a life of
simple cares and few sorrows, up yonder?” asked I, as I gazed upward.
While I continued to look, the great floating clouds that soared on
the mountain-top began to mass and to mingle together, thickening and
darkening at every moment, and then, as though overweighted, slowly to
descend, shutting out chalet and shady copse and crag, as they fell, on
their way to the plain beneath. It was a grievous change from the bright
picture a few moments back, and not the less disheartening, that the
heavily charged mist now melted into rain, that soon fell in torrents.
With not a rock nor a shrub to shelter under, I had nothing for it but
to trudge onward to the nearest village, wherever that might be. How
speedily the slightest touch of the real will chase away the fictitious
and imaginary! No more dreams nor fancies now, as wet and soaked I
plodded on, my knapsack seeming double its true weight, and my stick
appearing to take root each time it struck the ground. The fog, too, was
so dense that I was forced to feel my way as I went. The dull roar
of the Rhine was the only sound for a long time; but this, at length,
became broken by the crashing noise of timber carried down by the
torrents, and the louder din of the torrents themselves as they came
tumbling down the mountain. I would have retraced my steps to Bregenz,
but that I knew the places I had passed dryshod in the morning would by
this time have become impassable rivers. My situation was a dreary
one, and not without peril, since there was no saying when or where
a mountain cataract might not burst its way down the cliffs and sweep
clean across the road towards the Rhine.
Had there been one spot to offer shelter, even the poorest and meanest,
I would gladly have taken it, and made up my mind to await better
weather; but there was not a bank, nor even a bush to cower under, and I
was forced to trudge on. It seemed to me, at last, that I must have
been walking many hours; but having no watch, and being surrounded with
impenetrable fog, I could make no guess of the time, when, at length, a
louder and deeper sound appeared to fill the air, and make the very
mist vibrate with its din. The surging sound of a great volume of water,
sweeping along through rocks and fallen trees, apprised me that I was
nearing a torrent; while the road itself, covered with some inches of
water, showed that the stream had already risen above its embankments.
There was real danger in this; light carriages--the great lumbering
diligence itself--had been known to be carried away by these suddenly
swollen streams, and I began seriously to fear disaster. Wading
cautiously onward, I reached what I judged to be the edge of the
torrent, and felt with my stick that the water was here borne madly
onward, and at considerable depth. Though through the fog I could make
out the opposite bank, and see that the stream was not a wide one, I
plainly perceived that the current was far too powerful for me to breast
without assistance, and that no single passenger could attempt it
with safety. I may have stood half an hour thus, with the muddy stream
surging over my ankles, for I was stunned and stupefied by the danger,
when I thought I saw through the mist two gigantic figures looming
through the fog, on the opposite bank. When and how they had come there,
I knew not, if they were indeed there, and if these figures were not
mere spectres of my imagination. It was not till having closed my eyes,
and opening them again, I beheld the same objects, that I could fully
assure myself of their reality.